Alto High Speed Rail

brainstorm

Carboy15

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/high-speed-rail-construction-could-begin-in-four-years-leblanc-says/

Hope this is true

brainstorm

Carboy15 Ya dude. Totally.

They need to focus on the Toronto to Ottawa/Montreal portion. Quebec City seems smaller given the distance. At least initially. Our French contingent should have good inputs here.

Need to do more research on this. Because the numbers at 300km/h seem a bit "halfway".

BlackDog

I would include Windsor, London, and Hamilton in the equation.

brainstorm

Here's the density problem on the HSR situation.

All the density, and verifiable air traffic, exists on the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal leg. As the crow flies, this is only 520km. So this is the clear economic winner.

But if we add fringe legs like Quebec City on the East, or the London-Hamilton-Kitchener-Windsor on the west, economics fall sharply. Not only are they multi-hop (negating the benefits of HSR), the density is way lower.

So focus needs to be solely on the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal leg IMO.

brainstorm

This also brings in speed.

From what it sounds like, they want 300km/h. They say they're targeting 3hrs from Toronto to Montreal, which is only 500km as the crow flies.

That's horrible!

Spend $90 billion to get twice as long of a journey as flying? Where's the cost benefit in that?

They should go Maglev, targeting 500km/h like the Chinese are working on and shooting for 1.5hr travel time. On par with flying, but better due to no taxi, turns, checkins, or baggage.

BlackDog

We should contract Chinese companies to build it at 500km/h. This would increase the speed, while decreasing the time betwen Toronto and Montreal. As an added bonus, it gives the middle finger to the US.

brainstorm

BlackDog Totally. Like how are they targeting 3hr for a 500km trip, when they want 300km/h design speed? The math don't math. That alone should be 1.7hr. Not 3hr.

How are they doubling this travel time? Are they stuffing the route with stops? (Wouldn't surprise me)

lio45

Thinking outside the box a bit, why do we need a Toronto-Montreal HSR connection? Instead of spending anything on this, I'd rather make investments towards better mobility within the GTA, within Greater Montreal, and within the Ottawa-Gatineau region.

With remote work having been semi-normalized by Covid, and now AI entering the stage, I think the future demand for people needing to alternate between being physically in the GTA then in Greater Mtl and vice versa, is not a trend that we should invest in, no?

Let's instead spend that money to get our compressed nat gas to Europe...? We should spend our $$$ on moving the right things to the right places 😛

brainstorm

lio45 Very astute take man. Check premises. Critically important.

I do think HSR from Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal still makes sense when checking premises.

Japan did HSR for roughly $40 million per km CAD.
So for 520km, we're looking at $21 billion. Reasonable.

Current GPT travel estimates:

Air = 3,800,000/yr
Rail = 2,200,000/yr
Total = 6,000,000/yr
‎
Current air/rail ticket = $100
$600m in annual revenue
‎
35yr repayment on CapEx alone.

That's totally reasonable. It excludes financing costs and OpEx, but still, CapEx is 65% to 75% of total costs on these anyways.

So if they can hit 1.5hr travel time to make it attractive, I think the HSR makes economic sense. In fact, it's even workable for a private venture. Gov just needs to get out of the way.